Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: War of the Spark
Welcome to Magical Thinking, a look back at the cards and art of Magic: the Gathering, set by set, from the beginning. All through the eyes of a casual fan. This week is it: the big finale to the battle between Gatewatch and Nicol Bolas. It’s the end of an era. This week we look at May 2019’s War of the Spark.
On the plane of Ravnica, Bolas has brought the immortal sun and his army of blue zombies from Amonkhet for the purposes of completing the Elderspell, which will harvest the sparks of countless planeswalkers and make Bolas a god. However the Gatewatch aren’t gonna go down without a fight. We got planeswalkers from all over coming in to join the fight. It’s a regular planeswalker free-for-all for all the marbles. Will Gatewatch finally triumph? Or will Bolas’ mad ambitions be realized? Let’s find out.
SON OF A CUSSING CUSS WORD.
This card. THIS CARD. This card was the bane of my existence when I played on Arena. It doesn’t look like much, right? Basic grizzly bear stats, nothing special. But that ability. Remember Healer’s Hawk? Remember the Orator? Remember ALL THAT LIFEGAIN? When this thing hit the board you either killed it straight away or you just died when it snowballed out of control. And every White deck I played against had one in their opening hand, almost without fail. It was…it was a very frustrating time. So yeah, Ajani’s Pridemate is not a mate of mine.
Yeah, as if we didn’t have enough lifegain in White right now. This one isn’t as bad as the Pridemate, but it’s still annoying.
And there’s the big guy himself Gideon, once again leading from the front. He’s a great guy and I hope nothing bad ever happens to…
Ohhhhh.
Well, this is a war after all, and there are always casualties in war. Gideon, you went down like a true badass. I salute you, sir.
Of course the irony is that if you use this card on your Gideon planeswalker card he would be fine because he’s indestructible and can’t be damaged on your turn.
Remember the Amonkhet gods? Well Bolas turned them into zombies to lead his army. Apparently he just did to rub Gatewatch’s failure in their face. The Gods in this set are basically immortal, just chilling in your deck briefly when they die. I really like the flavor there.
The problem with reviewing these in order is sometimes you get spoiled on the end. So behold, the final fate of Nicol Bolas. Sparkless, brought low, and imprisoned in his own demiplane. Also, this was the White removal du jour alongside Conclave Tribunal until Theros Beyond Death brought back Banishing Light.
*Land of Confusion Intensifies*
I like the flavor of this card. Basically the people grow bigger and angrier the more of their friends die, becoming stronger as more injustices are heaped upon them. It shows that the common man will not stand idly by while the boot of oppression tramples down upon them.
This set introduces a whole bunch of new planeswalkers. Notable among them is Teyo, who ends up becoming the POV character of the novels. Mainly because writing the tie-in novel was given to Greg Weismann, who was unfamiliar with the setting. Now you might be thinking “Why would they give the big finale of their big year-spanning saga to a guy who doesn’t know the source material?” Well the answer is apparently before this Wizard got rid of their in-house writing staff. Now if that seems like a bad idea, it’s because it was. Lucky for Wizard, I’m here to talk about the cards, not about the accompanying fiction (Or how they did Nissa and Chandra dirty, but that’s a conversation for later).
Another new planeswalker we get to meet today is The Wanderer. Now if you have been following the spoilers for Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, you already know what the Wanderer’s deal is, but at this point all we know about her is she’s a wandering samurai planeswalker who can’t always control where she goes, and she has to focus to stay on a particular plane.
I saw this card a lot when I played Arena, and it’s easy to see why. This guy lets you search for spells. Although if he can see the future he probably should have seen that humiliating defeat coming.
You know, I never actually got around to watching Avengers Endgame.
Amass is the new keyword of this set. And it’s a doozy, meant to represent Bolas’ zombie army. As a single token, which just keeps growing. And bigger. AND BIGGER. I had a lot of fun with Dimir amass decks, but it’s so specific to this set I don’t think we will be seeing it again.
This fun little guy shows up all over the place, and now he finally has a card. He’s a personal favorite, and a very flavorful card.
A lot of the planeswalker cards also get signature spell cards. In this case we have newcomer Kasmina, a mysterious magical mentor, who will show up later in Strixhaven. Her signature spell? Turning people into frogs. Also, I never appreciated how creepy that zombie frog is until I saw this card up close (Heck I didn’t even realize it was a zombie frog).
You know what they say. Sometimes a trap is just a very aggressive housewarming party.
…Okay, I don’t think anyone says that. But they should.
Here is another card I saw a lot. I always love Illusion creatures, and in this case it’s just “The thing it’s copying but stronger”. I didn’t play this card too much, but I saw them a lot.
This was always a favorite of mine. They basically blocked the zombie with a EULA. It’s also another one I saw and used a lot, because a one mana scry is always super useful.
Because of course he has a giant evil fortress. Why wouldn’t he?
This was a fun card. Just be careful not to accidentally kill yourself playing cards with it (because I did that a few times).
This is probably my favorite of the amass cards, since it’s a set it and forget it card. Yeah, you lose life each turn, but once your zombie army gets big enough you get it back with interest. Especially when combined with other amass cards.
Yeah, this is Bolas plan in action: He’s stealing the sparks of other planeswalkers in order to empower himself, and using his zombie army to do it.
I just love that this card exits. It’s just a vanilla card, but come on. It’s a ZOMBIE HIPPO. That is amazing.
On Arena, you could enter a code and get an entire deck that was built around this card. So I got a lot of use out of this version of Liliana. This Liliana will always be a personal favorite for that reason.
Behold, either the worst superhero ever or the best. I’m not sure.
I didn’t see a lot of Massacre Girl, but she did drop in from time to time to wipe out an entire board. I think I tried to make a deck around her once, but it didn’t really work.
So yeah, remember Domri? Well Mr. Anti-Establishment immediately bent knee to Bolas the second he showed up, because, as the leader of the Gruul, Domri knew Bolas would burn the rest of the guilds down. Kind of ignoring that Bolas is probably worse than the guilds. Needless to say the rest of the Gruul abandoned him quickly, and for his troubles Domri was the first to die, and nothing of value was lost.
Gideon may have died, but he had one last chance to be awesome before he went. The only way this could be more metal is if one or both of them were shredding a guitar as they dived.
Kind of the opposite of the defeat cards from Hour of Devastation. Now each Gatewatch member gets their own triumph card, which does more of a thing if you control their planeswalker. Sadly, Chandra’s triumph should have been being able to overcome institutionalized homophobia so she could be with Nissa and not be retconned at the last minute as only liking buff burly guys (Yes I will die mad over that, as should everyone).
The amass cards covered all the Grixis affiliated colors; Blue, Black and Red. I only played with the Blue and Black ones because I only rarely dabble in decks of more than two colors. But Red has their amass cards too, as seen here. It’s worth noting that a lot of amass cards don’t only amass, they let your zombie army do other stuff, like trample.
As you may recall, the Red Amonkhet god actually survived Bolas’ extermination. So for the cycle of gods here instead of a zombie god we got the Gruul god Illharg, the Raze Boar. Now this raises all sorts of questions considering he has the same immortality power as the zombie gods. So the question is, does the plane effect how gods work? Is it a coincidence? I need answers. AND PICTURES. OF SPIDER-MAN.
Here is another one of those snowballing cards you gotta watch out for. Actually, I have a soft spot for Krenko and his goblin army spawning. I played quite a few goblin decks on Arena, and Krenko was always a major player in them when he was legal.
Hey, it’s Tibalt, and he has a not-terrible card this time. I think this was the first planeswalker card I ever played around with; simple, effective ability, doesn’t overstay his welcome, even generates his own blocker.
A staple of every green deck at the time, the perfect blend of mana acceleration and flyer hate, all the things that make Green great. Also it’s a sloth lemur thing. Look at that “no thoughts head empty” face. I WANT TO HUG THEM SO BAD.
Hey, remember proliferate? Well it’s back too. Makes sense considering this is the “Everyone and their uncle gets counters” set.
Man, that Clifford the Big Red Dog movie was WEIRD.
So this was a card I saw A LOT of when this set was standard legal. She generates extra mana, turns your land into creatures, and her ultimate gets you ALL THE FORESTS and makes them indestructible. This Nissa is pretty much a win button on her own. I don’t think I played her too much myself, but like I said I saw her a ton of times.
Speaking of cards you see a lot of, this was pretty much THE mana dork at the time. Not only do they make mana of any color, but they are hexproof until tapped, so you will probably get a chance to use them.
We will see more of Vivien later on when we get to Ikoria, but she’s another cool new planeswalker. Of course it’s her Ikoria card that’s the real winner.
Casualties of War: When you need to destroy a bunch of stuff at once. Accept no substitutes.
Hm, okay. So you zombified the giant gods just as a middle finger to the Gatewatch, you gave them a spark extracting spell, and you decided to enslave a necromancer and second-hand kill her best friend. Bolas, I think I can spot where you messed up, bro.
Devil on a unicycle. What does it mean?
This card becomes way more fun after the next expansion when we get a lot more sacrifice outlets. And also way more annoying.
And of course we have the big man himself, who has the ability of every other planeswalker, and can just make you lose if you run out of heroes (which is pretty thematic, but I don’t think I ever seen it in practice).
This was a pretty controversial card, mainly because no one likes playing without instants, so he was eventually banned. And is still banned in Pioneer.
What’s better than a Wrath of God? A Wrath of God who spares a single creature of yours. Did I say better? I meant more annoying. Same thing in Magic, really.
At the time, I thought that Angrath was part of Bolas’ evil crew, but apparently him having amass is because he’s using his chains to wrap up zombies and to beat other zombies. Which is metal. Confusing, but metal.
Ah yes, the perfect mill card. Not only do they mill, but they also erase the graveyard. I was on both ends of this card, and they are a pain. Also Ashiok doesn’t actually show up in the connected fiction. I guess they are around, but they don’t do anything. This is an ongoing theme with Ashiok.
And here we have Kiora, everyone’s favorite merfolk monster summoner. When Ikoria came out I used this card a lot, but more on that later.
As I mentioned last time, one of my first decks was built around Captive Audience, a seven mana spell, which called for this baby; a mana rock big enough to make two mana at once. Maybe not the most efficient, but they get the job done.
Blast Zone was a card that was behind some complicated plays that went over my head. I saw it a few times, but never played it myself (Also the decks that did use it also often had like a dozen different ways to win games).
And now it’s time for us to blast off. Bolas is defeated, and the Gatewatch is effectively over, so now it’s time to start a new chapter in the history of Magic, and what a chapter it will be. Kike something out of a fairy tale, or King Arthur, or both? Next week join us as we sit upon the Throne of Eldraine. But until then, I decree you all Stay Magical.
